STIFF LAW FOR DRUNKEN DRIVERS, NOT TERRORISTS

A couple of news items during the week will confuse and confound those who watch India as it struggles to meet the challenges it faces as a nation in an increasingly hostile environment.

India has once again been classified as one of the “world’s most terror-afflicted countries” by the US State Department in its annual report on terrorism. As per the report, 2,300 people were killed in India by terrorists in 2007, with terrorist activities, particularly of Islamic terrorist groups, targeting all parts of India. The report highlights once again the outdated and overburdened law enforcement and legal systems which are most ill equipped to tackle this menace which is growing bigger and more dangerous by the day.

You would expect that this important report which serves to remind India of the dangers it faces would find prominent mention in the media. But no; both the print and visual media are obsessed with the inaugural Indian Premier League Cricket tournament, particularly the pretty and scantily clad cheerleaders and the Bollywood brigade glamorizing the sport in an unprecedented manner.

Surprisingly, one news item which has made the front pages of some newspapers is about stiff laws being proposed for drunken driving! Ever since motor vehicles started plying on roads, a few people have been driving them under the influence of alcohol and killing others accidentally due to the effects of inebriation. Now, as per the tough recommendations of Parliament’s standing committee, to deal with drunken driving, death due to drunken driving is to be treated as culpable homicide not amounting to murder (The Times of India, May 1, 2008).

On the face of it, the recommendations for stiffer laws for drunken driving make sense and have not come a day too soon. But considering that the chairman of the committee is the Communist leader Sitaram Yechury, there has to be a sub plot to the whole issue.

During the last few years, as India’s affluence and its media have grown at a blistering pace, a number of cases of death due to drunken driving by the rich and sometimes famous, or their children, have made great stories, what with witnesses and victims being paid large sums to protect the guilty. In fact, with such cases grabbing all the headlines, the many more deaths due to drunken driving by tired, poor, truck, bus and taxi drivers have gone almost completely unnoticed.

It is the killings by the drunken capitalists which seem to have energized Yechury and the commie brigade; no one bothered when the poor were killing the poor!

Again, while drunken deaths by the rich have propelled a recommendation to have stiffer laws, to act as a deterrent, Yechury and party have found no reason to formulate stiffer laws for terrorists who are waging war against the nation and are killing many innocent Indians in cold blood. As per former Punjab Police Chief KPS Gill, the overall conviction rate for all crimes in India is just 6.5 per cent, with the litigation process often extending to decades. More significantly, the conviction rates, under normal laws, for terrorist crimes in the regions afflicted by widespread terrorism would be less than 0.001 per cent, according to Gill. Yet, Indian law makers continue to justify the sorry state of affairs and say with a straight dishonest face that even when an anti-terror law was in place earlier, incidents of terrorism did not decrease! Then, pray, why recommend stiff laws for drunken driving?

Thanks to our law makers and weirdly 'guilty' media, in India you are much safer wantonly killing people with an AK 47 than being a rich man causing an accidental death while driving after one extra drink!

There was also a news item about the communist strongman Prakash Karat supporting the Maoists of Nepal in their demand that all treaties between India and Nepal should be re-negotiated. Karat wanted India to enter into ‘fair’ treaties with Nepal and also resolve its disputes with China through talks – as if India was threatening to invade China! Karat and Yechury have also been strongly against the proposed Indo-US nuclear agreement. The main reason, I suspect, is to keep their handlers in Beijing happy and to ensure that India does not acquire enough military muscle to make the Chinese think about consequences should they decide to attack India again sometime in the future.

Grotesque abuse of power has been the very essence of communism that has mercifully disappeared from the face of the earth, except India where it is still alive in its original purity only because it never got a chance to rule the nation and get properly unmasked. Communists all over the world drove their nations almost entirely in a drunken state, tanked totally with intolerant power. Yet, they remain unpunished and unrepentant for killing more people in the name of ideology than have been killed in all the wars fought in the world put together.

Communists in India too appear to be doing drunken driving, that too in reverse gear, to successfully ensure that the UPA government, gaspingly dependent on their few MPs, and the country remain stymied in their efforts to make India grow faster and stronger like the Chinese have.

China has sensible thrown communism completely out of the country, except in the name of its only political party. That is the secret of its stupendous success. The only way it seems that India can beat China is by exporting its pure communist leaders to that country!

Just visualize what Indian communists will do if somehow they get power in China.

First, they will apologize to Tibetans, Turks, Manchurians and other minorities living in 60 per cent of the landmass that constitutes present day China for annexing them. Then they will grant independence to these countries to free them from Han domination. Aksai Chin, the land where “not a blade of grass grows” will be honorably returned to India, with an apology for 1962. With Tibet free, China will have no border dispute with India. With peace prevailing all around, Indian commies will hack China’s defence expenditure and reduce the strength of its army. China will then join the exclusive club of weak, meek and inconsequential nations called NAM and helplessly bemoan the hegemony of the US. Westernization will be the next casualty. McDonald and other iconic American brands will be given marching orders and China will return to the Mao Tunic age, deglamourizing Brinda Karat with utmost insensitivity. Cycles will be in rage again. Finally, all those who oppose the return to ‘pure’ communism will be summarily exterminated, emulating the feats of heroes like Lenin, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot who killed untold millions without remorse!

Fortunately for the Chinese, such a scenario will never afflict them. That country has learnt the real lessons of communism. Even at the height of communist influence, it never, ever confused ideology with national interest. Now it is focused on “catching mice” rather than on the “colour of the cat”, to take the country to new, unprecedented heights! Indian communist type of communists have already been exterminated in that country. Such a lot are potent ‘force multipliers’ only when kept and activated in countries which are potential adversaries!

When is India going to take a leaf out of the book that the Chinese have mastered, and easily better it with a few creative ones of its own? Or are we going to keep re-enacting this sickening spectacle of focusing on the trivial and ignoring the critical, just to keep petty political turfs, and worse, warm and going?

This post was also published by reuters.com and Chicago Sun Times.